Previews

Final Fantasy Anniversary

Spiffy:

Iffy:

It's been remade numerous times, so there's nothing really new.

I can remember the first time I played Final Fantasy on the NES as well as I can remember when I first got Dragon Quest. I'm sure everyone in the USA remembers that offer by Nintendo Power, where a year subscription got you a free copy of the game, right? Later on, the magazine also offered the very first game-specific strategy guides, and one of them was for Final Fantasy. My most vivid memory of that game was when I had just defeated Garland, to the north of Cornelia, by order of the king himself. I crossed the rebuilt bridge and the game's prophecy flashed on-screen. I was totally in awe; to think, the journey had just begun.

If you've never played the first Final Fantasy game (and if you haven't, you're probably way too young to use the Internet, kiddo), the 20th anniversary edition of Final Fantasy features a sweet package that can let newcomers experience the game for the first time, and for veterans to delve into the adventure with the four warriors of light once again.
As a remake, Final Fantasy Anniversary is actually a really good package, especially if you've never played the game before. For starters, all of the graphics are completely redone and are really clean and crisp. Square Enix really took advantage of the PSP's capabilities and made a game that's visually appealing while still retaining the original game's charm. You even have small touches, such as clouds hovering lazily over towns. The character sprites are really clean-looking, although personally I'd say they seem a little bit too clean compared to the backgrounds. Instead of blending together uniformly, the two seemingly exist on different planes, which can look awkward when you first play the game.

Seeing as there's ton of storage space on those little UMDs, there are also some FMV scenes here and there, but these videos suffer the same problem as the in-game graphics; they really don't mesh together with the rest of the game, and it'll make you think that Square-Enix just went the cheap route and took material from the PSone release of Final Fantasy and shoehorned it into the game. Despite this, it's still a very nice-looking game. Another advantage of the UMD is that the soundtrack is now remixed for better quality, and it sounds a whole lot better than before. The classic Cornelia music and battle themes are wonderfully remastered and are definitely the stuff that nostalgia is made from.

Overall the game hasn't changed much, but there are a few things that have been thrown in to make things more interesting. The battle system was changed slightly so that your characters auto-aim on new targets if the original target is killed. This was in other remakes as well, but it's something to make note of. There's also a new "defend" option to block attacks. The new dungeons from the GBA port, Dawn of Souls, are included, as well as a new dungeon called the "Labyrinth of Time," which is available near the end of the game. The new dungeon can be very difficult, a couple of notches above what you'd encounter in the last dungeon of the original game, if you need a reference.

The dungeon, true to its name, is set on a timer, and your health is constantly drained the longer you dwell in its depths. Of course, you can always resurface, but that would also mean starting from the beginning again, which is not fun. I was only able to get through the first couple of floors of the dungeon and they were pretty brutal, with tons of hard-hitting enemies attacking in packs of four or five, dealing anywhere from 200 - 500 damage in one hit. For masochists only, perhaps.

The downside of having the game on a UMD is that the load times are long enough to be annoying, and with the game's moderate encounter rate, you'll be looking at a white screen for a while. Load times can take anywhere between 3 -- 5 seconds, which is just a bit unacceptable, what with 2D graphics and all. Sure, they're really nice and super-clean 2D graphics, but it really shouldn't take as long as it does. On the other hand, the Japanese version actually has a bilingual option so that you can play the entire game in English -- pretty cool.

The game is coming out for a steal at $29.99, compared to the near-$40 price tag it has in Japan. The million-dollar question is this: is it worth buying this game if you've already played FF Origins on the PSone or Dawn of Souls on the GBA? Look for an in-depth review soon!